Top Spotify Lawyer: Attracting Pirates is in Our DNA (torrentfreak.com)

Spotify is not only one of the world's most popular music services, it's also one that's proven particularly popular with both current and former pirates. From a report on TorrentFreak: Today Spotify is indeed huge. The service has an estimated 100 million users, many of them taking advantage of its ad-supported free tier. This is the gateway for many subscribers, including millions of former and even current pirates who augment their sharing with the desirable service. Now, in a new interview with The Journal on Sports and Entertainment Law, General Counsel of Spotify Horacio Gutierrez reveals just how deeply this philosophy runs in the company. It's absolutely fundamental to its being, he explains. "One of the things that inspired the creation of Spotify and is part of the DNA of the company from the day it launched (and remember the service was launched for the first time around 8 years ago) was addressing one of the biggest questions that everyone in the music industry had at the time -- how would one tackle and combat online piracy in music?" Gutierrez says. "Spotify was determined from the very beginning to provide a fully licensed, legal alternative for online music consumption that people would prefer over piracy." [...] Of course, hardcore pirates aren't always easily encouraged to part with their cash, so Spotify needed an equivalent to the no-cost approach of many torrent sites. That is still being achieved today via its ad-supported entry level, Gutierrez says.

Comments

Re:The way they talk about pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

you'd think the pirates would have killed the music labels and music artists back in the tape days, yet here we are 2017 and music is going strong...

So they survived despite the piracy? Let's ramp up the Piracy!

Re:A small number of tone combinations are pleasan

[Kiuas]

There is a finite number of tone combinations that our ears consider pleasant.

'There's only a finite number of letter combinations that our eyes find pleasant'

The tone combinations are already there, there is no creation of it, therefore there is no piracy.. only the liberation of whats naturally human

'All the words have been written already at least once so there's no original works of literature anymore'

I may not have explained my point as best as it could be

Your point is not valid because it's not true.

Re:The way they talk about pirates

[mwvdlee]

The cycle is simple.

1. Labels start gouging customers.
2. Customers turn pirates.
3. Third party offers a service that doesn't gouge customers (the stage where Spotify currently is).
4. Pirates turn customers.
5. Labels notice that most people are paying for music.
6. Rince and repeat.

Re:The way they talk about pirates

[mwvdlee]

If they get paid per stream, then those fringe indies are making a lot more money off me than they used to.
I tend to go out exploring similar artists or searching for new music using Spotify and often end up at brilliant artists with just a few dozen followers.
A flat rate makes it so the artists can compete on the product, not the marketing.

Whipping the Llama's Ass

[0100010001010011]

Not quite sure why streaming now a fancy a 'new' technology. Shoutcast is still going strong with 67,814 stations (as of right now). Created in 1998. It has almost every type of station you could want to listen to. Works on any device that can play a stream and you can even rip it to disk if you want.